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Once again, sick and dying vets are trying to trace their cancers and respiratory problems to the toxins of war.

Hey, Iraq, don’t say we never gave you anything. In addition to hundreds of thousands dead and untold injured, the United States is leaving behind enough toxic waste sites to kill your rats.

“Open-air burn pits have operated widely at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Department of Veterans Affairs notes on its website. On hundreds of camps and bases across the two countries, the U.S. military and its contractors incinerated toxic waste, including unexploded ordnance, plastics and Styrofoam, asbestos, formaldehyde, arsenic, pesticides and neurotoxins, medical waste (even amputated limbs), heavy metals and what the military refers to as “radioactive commodities.” The burns have released mutagens and carcinogens, including uranium and other isotopes, volatile organic compounds, hexachlorobenzene, and, that old favorite, dioxin (aka Agent Orange).

The military pooh-poohs the problem, despite a 2009 Pentagon document noting “an estimated 11 million pounds [5,000 tonnes] of hazardous waste” produced by American troops, the Times of London reported. In any case, it says, the waste isn’t all that toxic, and there is no hard evidence troops were harmed. Of course, one reason for that lack of evidence, reports the Institute of Medicine (which found 53 toxins in the air above the Balad air base alone), is that the Pentagon won’t or can’t document what it burned and buried, or where it did so.

The little media attention that has been paid to this massive pollution has dimly illuminated its potential impact on U.S. troops. Left in mephitic darkness are the contractors, often impoverished South Asians, who did the dirty work at the bases, as well as Iraqi civilians who live and farm nearby. The Times of London reported that “open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland,” causing people to sicken and rats to die “next to soiled containers.”

The toxic air echoes with the Vietnam War’s Agent Orange fiasco. Victims of that war’s dioxin suffered for years before the United States took limited responsibility – but only for its troops, and not for the countries it poisoned.

The military’s history of pollution is long and largely unmitigated by legislation, treaties or lawsuits. It stretches around the world, from bases in the Philippines to Okinawa, Kuwait to Canada, and to numerous U.S. sites as well.

Once upon a time–before 9/11 turned conspiracy theories into a self-righteous boom industry–Area 51 was an amusing Mecca for a dedicated band of tinfoil-hat nutters who fantasized about alien anal probes and insisted that the government was hiding space aliens on a secret Air Force Base in the Nevada desert.

But a real and more nefarious plot was the military’s exploitation of lax regulation and worker confidentiality agreements to use Area 51 as a secret dumping/burning ground for the toxic waste shipped in from other bases.

As deaths mounted at Area 51, workers–and their widows–sued, producing evidence that the military had regularly filled football-field-sized trenches with 55-gallon drums of hazardous waste, doused them with jet fuel and set them ablaze. The lawsuit foundered on the shoals of “national security” secrecy. The military got away with murder.

Fast forward to U.S. military bases around the world that are similarly immune from effective regulation and reporting. GAO investigators charge that the military in Iraq burned prohibited substances and ignored “guidance” to monitor emissions and to analyze its waste stream.

Again, sick and dying vets, this time from Iraq and Afghanistan, are trying to trace their cancers and respiratory problems to the toxins of war. Again, the military refuses to release complete data, and claims the data show no harmful effects. Again, the assumption of culpability, and the clean-up efforts will come too little, too late.

A July article in the New England Journal of Medicine studied 80 soldiers disabled with constrictive bronchiolitis, “a very rare finding” in otherwise healthy, young non-smokers. Almost all the cases were traced to “inhalational exposures during service in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The journal lamented : “This group causes particular concern, since their potential toxic exposures are shared by most personnel who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.”

And, oh, yes, by those left to endure the predictable consequences of expedient poisoning. You’re welcome, Iraq.

It is very hard to stay in a respectful atmosphere when our own Government fails to protect and back the US citizens,troops,and tax payers. It is and will happen every day until one day the American people will get a refreshing wake up call from some foreign country that we had made a temporary home in whether it be because of war or some other humanitarian efforts with accusations of carelessness,recklessness,or just plain old ignorance. That's our Government and I personally am sick of the irresponsible decisions made by our Pentagon,the White House,Congress and the Senators who choose to make hardline decisions without the thought of repercussion. The Government did it in Vietnam,and now Iraq,and Afghanistan. For every act there is a reaction and with the what I call inexperienced with common sense all we have left is the aftermath of a decision process that failed. We should have never stayed in Iraq as long as we did. We should of pulled out long ago and yet we are still there spending the tax payer dollar even with this global economy falling fast. Just take a look at Healthcare reform. Here we are spending thousands of tax payer dollars in trying to get a decision overturned that should have never even gotten this far on the agenda. what a waste of time, waste of tax payer dollars, We will all die, it is our right to die in peace. The actions taken by our Government today will have a trickle down effect later,or what we know it as is repercussion, What you want to fine the taxpayers for not being able to afford health insurance that is so ungodly high in price it is out of most self-employed folks reach. including me. I held insurance for 20 years up to 2010 when I received my new bill for what was going to cost me $900.per month up from a mere $450. per month where is the common sense on the governments part. They allow this kind of free market to expand the greed as far back to the research stages and no one entity will take responsibility for the lack of action that should have been taken.Another Issue with involving our money is the devastation of our forests and the erection, of industrial wind turbines. They are killing our wildlife,making people sick and syphoning the budget without creating jobs on a larger scale. The government is desperate and will act on any new ideas that come across the desk with a promise of prosperity and wealth for someone that is obviously not the good of the people. Got Vision! Posted by Allen Barrette on 2012-03-27 07:42:54

I assume now the criminal defense San Francisco representative I saw recently in an interview was right about the need of intensifying psychological assessment in order to detect potentially dangerous citizens among us. Several countries have implemented this rigorous check program and their delinquency rate has been visibly decreasing.
Posted by daria spencer on 2012-03-20 10:12:04

Thanks Terry Allen. This is keeper info. And we didn't even get into the subject of depleted uranium.Posted by Arby on 2012-02-10 20:38:56

No wonder we are so totally loved all over this world! NOT! Poisoning the world one country at a time along with invasions and bringing "Austerity" programs to anyone corrupt/stupid enough to believe Liars!Posted by Jane Christenson on 2012-02-08 12:30:21

"before 9/11 turned conspiracy theories into a self-righteous boom industry"
Great article, but the above comment was an entirely gratuitous attack at people, many of whom are now valuable contributors to the public debate. Posted by Brian Damage on 2012-02-08 10:43:22

Mr. Allen didn't even mention the cluster bombs, napalm-like Mark 77 fire bombs, Daisy Cutters, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, carpet bombing, plutonium, and who knows what other weapons we've used there.
Depleted uranium, found by the UN to be "incompatible" with existing humanitarian and human rights laws, has a half-life that is as long as the earth is old. Much of Iraq's soil is now contaminated, effectively to the end of time.
These wars fail virtually every test imposed by just war theory, whether jus ad bellum (just cause for waging war), jus in bello (just behavior in war), or jus post bellum (just action after war). As a consequence, they are wars of aggression. If you're not frightened by what is happening here, you're not paying close enough attention.Posted by nyvegan on 2012-02-06 21:41:44

I read this very interesting article with much interest, and posted it again (with proper credit) on my FaceBook page, which has caused me a bit of trouble with a family member who is a retired Marine Corps Colonel. I would be grateful if I could have the document titles of the Veterans Affairs report and the other Pentagon report referenced, and any other documents that might be helpful to me. Thanks for an excellent post.Posted by Tom Graves on 2012-02-06 18:47:05